Facebook Textbook Exchange Launches

This project is designed to enable students a better alternative than the book shop for getting an education.

Techcrunch Discovers Our Silent Launch

Also, since last time, Marketplace and Gifts were including in Mark's Newsweek cover story:

Facebook Grows Up

Facebook Marketplace

Starting today, Facebook will be rolling out a new feature that enables Facebook to be used as a marketplace by our users.

Now, just like in Mesopotamia back in the day, you'll be able to jog to the town aqueduct, let people know you have a good crop of barley and onions and that you are looking to trade for a shiny new wooden plow, or if you're lucky, some ancestral wine.

Your listings in Marketplace may be a little more current - books and dvds you don't need anymore, the dream summer job you are looking to land, or the special requirements it takes just to be your roommate, but one thing remains the same - someone is offering something and another person is looking for something.

Facebook, with so many users returning to the site every day, can act as a really efficient coordinator of what one user wants and what another user has, much more so than the Ancient Agora in Athens.

In addition to this, the extra layer of transparency Facebook offers by providing this service on top of a social grid enables Marketplace users to safely engage each other.

Enjoy!

For coverage, see here:
Facebook Blog
New York Times
Techcrunch

Facebook Gifts

Pretty proud of this project. Working with Susan Kare and Komen for the Cure has been amazing.

For coverage, see here:
Facebook Blog
Techcrunch
Danah Boyd
Fred Stutzman
Gawker
Harvard Crimson
The Review

Friend Finder

One of the most strategic assets I have created for Facebook, the Friend Finder. Check it out periodically for new functionality.

NowDie.com

This project resulted from a friend of mine, Beau Hartshorne, who had a list of all the available 6 letter domain names still available for one of his projects Instant Domain Search, an ajax based tool for finding available domain names.

NowDie seemed like a good domain to send people to when something they are doing starts to get a little too irritating... try it yourself:

For that neverending email thread at work:
http://nowdie.com/people who continue this email thread

For that rude driver on the way to store:
http://nowdie.com/the guy who flicked me off in the bmw

And for your friend who forgot to pay the bill:
http://nowdie.com/cheap joey

Thanks for Chris Putnam for some of ideas and rewrite rules.

Enjoy.

Yub and Facebook are Making the Net Hot Again

Fortune Magazine in their May 1, 2006 issue lists 12 companies that "are making the Net hot again":

1. Yub - social networking meets discount shopping.
2. Craigslist - find your dream apartment, furniture, and the job to pay for it all.
3. Facebook - student socializing.
4. Gawker - snarky gossip and celebrity stalking.
5. Google Maps - directions made painfully easy.
6. MLB - follow your team with streaming audio, video.
7. YouTube - waste hours viewing random videoclips.
8. Wikipedia - you have questions, it has answers.
9. Myspace - hip online hangout.
10. Flickr - share photos with friends, family.
11. Pandora - customize and share your own radio station.
12. Neopets - virtual pets, real entertainment.

It's great to have been involved in 2 of the companies on that list.

Here's the online article the feature is part of:
10 ways to play the new Net boom.
The list is on the right of the article.

The screenshot of Yub in the Fortune Magazine article showcases the flash animation that is currently on Yub's homepage and was created by Todd Gallina.

Facebook

Today I joined Facebook where I will help design the product with a small team of best-in class product designers.

Mark Zuckerberg (ceo of Facebook) and I met in 2003 when I was starting Metails.com to discuss word of mouth marketing on the web. Having kept in touch and having sold Metails to Buy.com (it's now called Yub.com), I decided to join Facebook to create product for what I believe to be the best web product in the world.